Every successful program includes magic administrative worker bees who do critical work to maintain the hive.  They're the ones who dot the i's and cross the t's on appointment paperwork, remind absent-minded faculty to approve timesheets so that everyone gets paid on time, and otherwise make make things go smoothly. And they often work in anonymity.

Katie Keehn is the administrative worker bee of PREP@UCD.

PREP@UC Davis trainer Wil Joiner (Associate Professor, Neurobiology, Physiology, and Behavior) works with UC Davis faculty member Jonathon Schofield (Associate Professor, Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering) to design improved prosthetic limbs for children.

Joiner studies how the brain controls the limbs and movement, and collaborates with Schofield and clinicians at the Northern California Shriners Hospital for Children in this project.

PREP@UCD mentors Dr. Megan Dennis and Dr. Crystal Rogers both earned National Science Foundation CAREER Awards this year! The CAREER Award, NSF's most prestigious grant to early career faculty, provides five years of funding in support of both research and mentoring. UC Davis now has 23 faculty who have been selected for these awards in the 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 cycles.

The start of 2022 has brought changes. First, PREP@UC Davis is open for applications! Second, these four little cuties (or their siblings) have popped up across the university. 

...the month when all prospective graduate students wince from the realization that application due dates are around the corner.

Elva Diaz and Aldrin Gomes, both faculty in PREP@UCD, have been named to UC Davis' second cohort of Chancellor's Fellows for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion! Diaz and Gomes were recognized for their significant track record of abiding commitment to reducing opportunity gaps for students from historically marginalized groups.

Coming soon to a Zoom screen near you: the 2021 MCB 112 Poster Session, featuring scholars in PREP@UCD and three undergraduates who've been engaging in communications training with our PREP cohort.

Tuesday, 23 November, 12pm-2pm

Poster Session 1, https://ucdavis.zoom.us/j/99137829036?pwd=WUU2TDljQ1lvKzEwdlpLT29pelV1Zz09

PREP@UCD scholars and three talented undergrads celebrated successful completion of their GRFP proposals with lunch, courtesy of the UC Davis Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology.

And now we wait....and prepare posters for an in-house symposium...and visit the PREP site at UC Santa Cruz...and apply to PhD programs...and do research...and more research...etc.

No, the PREP scholars aren't running away...they (and Brandon Reyes-Chaves, a stellar undergrad from the Juliano lab) joined the UC Davis MCB T32 training program retreat at Fallen Leaf Lake. Stay tuned for updates, including the answer to the question: who will finally wrest the Polar Bear Swim Chicken Trophy out of Dan Starr's hands?

UC Davis' Office of Graduate Studies has announced the inaugural cohort for the Faculty Academy of Graduate Student Well-Being.